"You're right," assented Dad, and pulled at his mustache. "There's a lot to do."
Tom Beck began to whistle softly and the older man glanced sideways at him uneasily; then fixed his eyes on the road.
"I'll bet two bit," volunteered Two-Bits, "that she's as homely as Tom claims I am an' about as pleasant as a hod full of bumble bees."
No one demonstrated interest in his offer and, as though he had not even heard it, Beck said:
"Seems to me there's been a lot goin' on lately, Dad. Or did you mean there was a lot more to do?"
"I don't remember such awful activity," the other replied. "'Course, there's been—"
"Nobody ever located those four mares an' their colts, did they? And the last we heard about that bunch of white faces they was headed towards Utah with a shod horse trailing 'em."
Hepburn changed what started as an impatient expostulation into a sharp sigh and relieved himself by stabbing a spur into the hard ground.
"Yes, there has been stealin'," he admitted. "There's been a lot of it. But who could do anything? The old man had been slack for years and in the last months before the end he just let go entire. He wouldn't even give anybody else authority enough to have any say; didn't even have a foreman. That's why horses an' cattle have been stole from him.
"'Course, there's been more devil to pay since he died than went on before, but when a man leaves things in a lawyer's hands and the lawyer won't even look in on the job, what you goin' to do?"